


A change in the climate

by ButterflyRaven



Category: Firebringer - Team StarKid
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, Gen, Hopefully some fluff, I'm Bad At Tagging, I'm Tagging as I go along, Refusal to use the word said, and some angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:34:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26818147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterflyRaven/pseuds/ButterflyRaven
Summary: Firebringer modern high school AU, which is about as accurate to the original show it can be, considering the fact I've changed everything, if that makes sense. I don’t know how to summarise, I’m afraid, so I’m sorry about that :) I’ll tag pairings and characters when I get to them
Relationships: Jemilla & Molag (Firebringer), Jemilla & Zazzalil (Firebringer), Jemilla/Zazzalil (Firebringer), Keeri & Zazzalil (Firebringer)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	1. This chapter took me over a month to write, and it's finally finished can I get a wahoo?

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, welcome to this fic, thanks for clicking on it, I guess. Please do enjoy! I started writing this about a month ago, but then stopped because of a load of schoolwork, so that should tell you all you need to know about updates on this thing

September had arrived, and the air had a slight shine to it. The lonely anticipation that came hand in hand with the end of summer was beginning to dissipate, slowly being replaced with the feeling of absolute tiredness that was being back at school. It wasn’t the best evening to be out in the open, but Jemilla knew that since it was her GCSE year, and she had the honour of being hockey captain, there wouldn’t be much time for any activity as calm and ordinary as sitting by the river with her sister, just being there together. Plus the fact Molag was going away to university in a couple of days. That too.

There had been lots of days like this in the summer. They’d sit down to dangle their feet in the cold water. Molag would pretend to slip, making quite a show of flailing around, screaming and splashing the water with her crutches just to freak her ‘little’ sister out. It was currently working. 

“Ah aah aa aaa..oh you’re doing this on purpose,” Jemilla was not impressed. She made a point of not looking at Molag as she swished her feet back and forth in the water, fixing her eyes on the lone duck swimming around on the other side of the river. “It’s not funny when you do that”

“I think it’s funny,” Molag laughed as she spoke, but realising Jemilla was getting offended she decided to change her tack. “Here, do you want to hold my seashell, I know you like that.”

Jemilla accepted it, looking at it the same way she had when she first saw it. Jemilla did like shells rather more than most. They were a large part of her aesthetic. She had even spent one long week slowly taking apart puka shell bracelets her friends had given her and adorning a plain brown crop top with them, and was very proud of her handiwork. “Yeah, yeah I do.”

“You know, I never thought anyone would be able to stop the Great Debate. Seriously, I thought Chorn and SB were headed for a good old fight, with lots of kicking, screaming and hair-pulling.” She gazed somewhat sarcastically into the middle distance. “God I miss those.”

“It wasn’t all me,”Jemilla looked up from the shell to face her sister. “Peace is something that we make together.”

“Don’t be so modest, Peacemaker,” Molag retorted, punctuating the new nickname with a nudge to the ribs. “Just look at all you’ve accomplished, staying out of trouble and thinking your way out of problems and that.”

Jemilla smiled to no one in particular, tilting her head to the side.. “Hey, you were great too Molag,” Jemilla began to say, laughing awkwardly, her eyes somehow enlarging as she tried not to offend her sister because she really wasn’t the kind of person you wanted to get on the wrong side of. “Everyone remembers you, I can say that for sure”

“Yeah, for the right reasons though?” She shrugged. “Molag, the Master of Chaos, that’s what they used to call me.” The middle part of the sentence was overstressed in the same way a game show presenter might announce the next trashy thing the contestants had to participate in.

“You know, we still tell your stories to the little ones just to scare ‘em to bits.”

“Good,” Molag replied, with an air of admiration. “Those privileged ducks” She paused, and for a little while the two of them just relaxed. To Jemilla, it seemed like the end of an era, but also the beginning of a new one, a good one, Jemilla’s era.

“Look, before I go, I need to clear up a few things, so I can leave in good conscience. See, when I was in high school, it was a much more chaotic time, and so I may have said some things that may not have been entirely true,” Molag punctuated her dialogue with an uneasy smile. “You know that duck we keep in our shed?”

“How could I not? He came to you at hockey practice and since then he has brought us good luck in all aspects of life. He only eats dark chocolate to preserve his magical powers, and he loves us all and requires us to keep him safe; what are you getting at here?” The speech began almost scripted but panic rose in Jemilla’s voice.

“Yeah… that’s a pack of lies.”

Molag could see Jemilla freaking out. In fact, so could quite a few other people. Her breathing was very quick, and she ended up making a sound somewhat like a deflating balloon, which was accurate to how she felt if we’re being honest.

“Think about it Jemilla, isn’t it a bit coincidental that the powerful creator of fortune and success would just live so close to us, and come to us one day?”

“Nnnnno,” Jemilla said, waving her forefinger in the air with little control. “It picked us out to honour our team above all others, because we’re the best! Oh man, that’s our school motto, Sumus optimus! We’re the best!”

Molag chuckled. “That’s probably the biggest fib you’ve ever been told.”

“What?” 

“The world was not made with us in mind, and that duck probably hates us most of all, seeing as we’ve been keeping it there and probably not giving it enough good food.”

“But, the chocolate…”

“Oh, I’ve been eating that.”

“I feel like everything you’ve ever told me is a lie. Like, next you’re gonna tell me Tiblyn isn’t really keeping google running?”

Molag didn’t have to reply to that.

“SHE’S NOT?” Jemilla yelled, more shocked than she had been 5 minutes ago if that was possible.

“I’m sorry, I’m not doing what?” Asked Tiblyn, announcing herself from the other side of the river. Jemilla noticed that she had her laptop under her arm as always, 

“Oh, uh, nothing. Keep up the good work, You’re the best.” Molag accompanied her response with finger guns.

Jemilla grit her teeth and made a noise like a lawnmower attempting to cut some particularly tough grass, and after 4 long seconds she exploded. “How can you keep lying to people when you know the truth?”

“Because it’s easy.” As Jemilla continued to freak out, Molag leaned over and hugged her sister. “But don’t you see, you’re a better person than I ever have been. Jemilla, I have loved you for years and years now. I know you can do this.”

Jemilla was calming down, and had slipped into the tired phase that comes after big emotions. “They are all gonna be so angry when I tell them about the duck.”

Molag gave her a sharp pat on the back. “Well, it’s your problem, I’m getting out of here,” She half-laughed, getting her crutches and standing up out of the water. “I don’t wanna be around when it all goes down. Bye Jemilla!”

So there Jemilla was, sat by the water, staring off into the distance, as if hoping to spot her previous sense of peace and happiness. She swore under her breath, thinking what all her friends would say when they found out.


	2. Chapter 2 can you believe it?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The scene before what if, you know the one I mean hopefully. I've tried to keep my characters as I character as possible

Zazzalil walked into her form room, feeling less than excited, if we’re being honest. Yes, she’d been longing to get back to school after being incredibly bored at the end of the summer, but now that she’s remembered that while there was the fun of seeing all her friends and getting to be part of a group again, there were also copious amounts of work to do, which was at least an hour’s drive, two trains and a bus away from good.

“Hey Jemilla," she said, plopping down into the blue plastic chair next to the girl she couldn’t quite think of a word for, not giving her the honour of being a friend. Rival, perhaps, that worked. This rval was currently staring off sadly into the middle distance, utterly nonplussed. "You seem to not know what to do with your life, but boy do I have an idea for you," this was a sentence that required finger guns, so Zazzalil provided them with a bit of her signature pizazz.

"What, like turning up on time for once?" asked Jemilla, her voice practically dripping with sarcasm.

"Everyone knows the teachers ignore the fact that you're late so long as you ignore the fact that they're the latest, you’re avoiding the question."

"Uh, you didn't ask me a question," Jemilla responded, as she was unsure how to do so in any other fashion.

"Yes, I did, a rhetorical one. Come on, we've been working all day every day, and for what? We're still just as stressed and clueless about life as we were 3 weeks ago."

Jemilla had been going to tell Zazzalil that rhetorical questions don’t require an answer but her reflexes kicked in and she reached out to touch Zazzalil’s arm, in a vague attempt to get her to focus on her actual schoolwork. "Zazzalil please, none of your ideas, not now…"

"Just hear me out, here me out. See, we spend our entire lives studying for exams that no one will even care about in a few years, in the hope it'll make us smarter, but let's face it: we cannot compete with the actual smart people. They're always going to be better than us. So, what if, since the pass marks are based off how well everyone in the country does, we stop trying to do that?"

"Nnnnno, we are not going back to Molag's 'set off the fire alarm during the exam and give yourself extra time to think of the answers while they're checking for flames' strategy. Oh, god, that's actually such a good memory."

"No, no no no, not fire alarms, or over studying. See, if we hang back, and get everyone in the country to do the same, then the examiners will be sat there thinking, "Hmm, Must have been an incredibly hard paper this year, I'd better let these kids get some extra marks easily", using her yet-to-be-trademarked Draco Malfoy voice for the last part.

"Don’t make them nice," interrupted Keeri, having swung back on her chair to listen to her friends' conversation. 

"Okay, they're thinking "what a bunch of idiots these children are," and the thing is, while they don't even know what's happening, we'll be lowering the grade boundaries and then they'll make exams easier for the kids that come after us. I mean, I haven't yet figured out how we're gonna make everyone do badly on their exams so that'll happen, but still, good idea am I right?" Zazzalil was throwing her arms around in the air as she said this, and Jemilla was surprised she hadn't fallen off her chair. "Think about the Snarl kids, they do this thing-"

"Oh no, we do not think about the Snarls, we do not want to be like them." Jemilla had somehow slipped into what the rest of the tribe called her ‘teacher voice’. She noticed that Keeri was still listening, eating bits of paper like popcorn with a movie, and sent her a quick "gross" before returning "Look, Zazzalil, it's not that hard to just do what you're supposed to do okay? It's like, we turn up on time, look at the clock, we use our eyeballs, right?" Zazzalil nodded dejectedly. "We do our work, ooh, we use our brains,"

"I've done it so many times."

"We take exams, we answer questions, get good marks, Yay!" Continued Jemilla, with a mocking tone, slightly oblivious to the fact that what she was describing wasn’t necessarily easy.

"It’s a bit harder than that - actually," Keeri almost whispered.

"Zazzalil, coming up with these ideas takes time, and you could be using it for more important things," she stood up, gathering her things into her arms. She took a deep breath, "Just do your work, okay?" She squeezed Zazzalil's shoulder and walked briskly out of the room.

Zazzalil stood up as well, using a whiny voice to mock Jemilla’s "just do your work", and rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. 

Keeri shook her head, "She doesn't get it."

The two of them walked off towards their next lesson, Keeri thinking about how plain paper tastes better than lined, and Zazzalil thinking about how she would think of a better idea to stop the days all being so monotonous, and reinvent life itself. And shove it in Jemilla’s face.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked it please leave kudos and comments, as I have reliably been told that they are what fanfic writers feed on :)


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